


to ash

by truethingsproved



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Dragon Age II Quest - All That Remains, Post-Dragon Age II Quest - All That Remains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 14:05:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17427311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/pseuds/truethingsproved
Summary: Grief crawls in through her mouth, tightens her throat as it slithers down, sets up a home in her belly and spreads. It seeps into her bones to hollow them out and bleed inside, replacing the marrow, and it poisons her blood with every beat of her treacherous heart. It chills her from her core until she is as heavy and cold as the thing in her arms.





	to ash

__**And then the Maker sealed the gates  
Of the Golden City   
And there, He dwelled, waiting   
To see the wonders   
His children would create.  
                                                    **\- Threnodies, 5:8

Grief crawls in through her mouth, tightens her throat as it slithers down, sets up a home in her belly and spreads. It seeps into her bones to hollow them out and bleed inside, replacing the marrow, and it poisons her blood with every beat of her treacherous heart. It chills her from her core until she is as heavy and cold as the thing in her arms.

     Thing. Not Leandra. She tells herself that, over and over – the patchwork  _thing_  she holds is not her mother. For a moment, she closes her eyes, and she imagines that Leandra is home, waiting to fuss over her, to scold her for the blood on her clothes and in her hair and to shudder in horror at another of her daughter’s stories. But the dream only lasts a moment, and she opens her eyes to look into the too-familiar face, to lift her hand to close her lifeless eyes. 

     Empty, empty, she has nothing left to give. She feels Anders kneeling beside her, and she hears footsteps – the heavier tread, slightly uneven, favoring his left. Varric. And the light, near-inaudible pad of calloused skin on the cold stone beneath them. Fenris. Anders doesn’t touch her, merely sits with her, and Varric speaks, too quietly for her to catch more than a few words.  _Aveline,_ and  _guard,_ and  _faster than I can._ Fenris answers –  _watch her. I’ll be back._ There is a corner of her mind that hasn’t been swallowed whole by her agony and she wants to tell him that Aveline and the guard are on their way already, that she told them she was sweeping Lowtown at sundown, that Isabela and Sebastian should be here too –  _not Merrill, not Merrill_ – but her lips are cold and her tongue is numb.

     And so she sits, and she cradles the mother-that-was, the husk of the women-that-were, stitched together like spare parts on a poor frame. She hears Varric move behind her but she doesn’t lift her head. She feels Anders shift to sit, feels his eyes on her, but she can’t look away. Not-Leandra is so heavy, but she can’t let her go. 

     She hears panicked steps –  _Oh, Hawke._ Isabela’s voice, and then, louder, deeper,  _Maker help us,_ Aveline. She hears the gagging of an inexperienced guard, and the clink of metal on metal as one of his companions nudges him. She hears her own breath, shallow and ragged, and she hears Aveline ask if she’s moved, hears Varric say that she hasn’t, hears Isabela murmur something indecipherable to Fenris. 

     It’s Fenris who speaks next, loud enough for her to hear. “Hawke,” he says, and the rumble of his voice is a comfort, the sorrow in it a knife between her ribs. “Look at me.” He crouches down in front of her, beside the shell of the Leandra-Ninette-Mharen-no-more, his expression inscrutable. She wishes he would stop talking. She just wants to take care of her mother.  _Mama, no, it’s okay, I’ll save you._  But she looks up at him as he commands, and he reaches down to gather the body himself, his hands curling around her arms beneath the corpse.

     “Hawke,” he says again, “you need to let go. Aveline and the guards have come.” And then, softer, so soft only she can hear, “You need to let her go.”

     She keeps her eyes on his and she wants to scream,  _no, no, I need to help her, I can save her, Mama don’t go don’t go don’t go_  but she knows him. She trusts him. And so she obeys, arms going limp and sliding out of his grasp, and he holds the body up before lowering it, gently, carefully to the ground. 

     Anders touches her now, gathers her quickly into his grasp and tucks her face against his chest, and she hears a scream. It is animal, and agonized, and something she’s never heard before, and it’s all she can hear, and she feels Anders’ fingers curl against the back of her head and hold her closer, she feels the feathered pauldrons in her grasp as she pulls herself against him, and she hears that scream.

     Grief crawls in through her mouth, tightens her throat as it slithers down, sets up a home in her belly and erupts. It takes her a moment to realize that she’s the one screaming. She doesn’t think she knows how to stop.

 

* * *

 

__**Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.  
Foul and corrupt are they   
Who have taken His gift   
And turned it against His children.   
They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones.   
They shall find no rest in this world   
Or beyond.  
                                                    **\- Transfigurations, 1:2.  


She couldn’t stand. As soon as she’d tried, she collapsed; only Anders’ careful arms had stopped her from crumpling to the stone below them. She remembers only flashes – Anders carrying her through Lowtown, toward the Undercity, pressing a kiss to her forehead as they walked. Fenris taking her when Anders’ arms grew too tired to hold her any longer, the way he’d tucked her close to him and rested his chin on the top of her head in a gesture of familiarity so careful and kind she’d started to cry.

     They go into his clinic; Anders gestures for them to go into the back, where he used to sleep before taking up residence with her. Fenris sits, keeping her in his grasp, and Anders moves – she’s not sure what he’s doing until she’s being placed, carefully, on the bed that used to be his. Careful hands move to unclasp her armor and strip it away, and when she looks up and opens her eyes, only Anders is there, undressing her and leading her towards the little stone tub, filled with water and hot enough that when she steps inside, she nearly flinches.

     But she sits, knees gathered to her chest, and he works to clean the blood and the grime from her skin and her hair. The heat of the water unknots her muscles but she holds herself tightly, moving only when instructed; she looks at the water only once, sees the streaks of red and brown and closes her eyes immediately. Anders leans forward, presses his lips to her shoulder and cups a hand against the side of her face.

     Her eyes open; she pulls back only enough to look at him. “Don’t leave me,” she begs, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Please. Please, don’t leave me.”

     He won’t.

     She stands; he wraps her in an old robe and takes her hand and leads her away. The doors to the clinic latch shut behind them and he guides her, barefoot and shivering, through the entrance to the Amell cellars with the key she’d given him weeks before. 

     Each step feels like a trial, as though she’s walking over broken glass, but she follows him without question. When they reach their room, he finds her some of her own clothes, and he leaves her only long enough to go back to the clinic and lock up, with the promise that he’ll return soon, and a stern instruction to Orana to keep an eye on her, and get him immediately if she needs him.

     Bodahn builds a fire. Orana brushes her hair. All silent. They stay only long enough to watch her, near catatonic, as she fails to respond to Sandal, or the mabari. The only thing that stirs her comes with the heavy thud of a closing door, and Gamlen’s voice.

     “Where is she?” he asks, and she closes her eyes. Grief is a hand that grips her heart and squeezes, squeezes, until it stills. “Did you find her?”

     It takes a moment before she can speak. Her voice is strained, and her throat is raw from the screaming. “She’s gone, Uncle,” she whispers, and she shudders. “I’m – so sorry.”

     She speaks, and he cries out, sharp and agonized;  _magic didn’t kill Mother. Madness did._ And when his grief is spent, when he has spit venom and bile at her and taken the remaining shreds of her heart to destroy what’s left of them, he calms, though she hears his words, over and over and over, as clearly as she had when Leandra had spoken them over Carver’s body.  _So it was your fault? If you had been stronger, or better –_  and her own voice, plaintive and childish and afraid.  _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

     At least her guilt isn’t alone in her belly anymore. She feels it twining around her grief, veins of lyrium bright and shining in the stone of her body. The only thing left of her with any value is her pain.

     When he has sated his agony, Gamlen looks at her, and he comes close enough to brush her hair back from where it’s fallen in her face. “I’ll tell Bethany,” he says, and his hand falls. “You have enough on your mind.” A beat, then – “Get some sleep, my dear.”

     By the time the front door closes again she is on her hands and knees, emptying the contents of her stomach, and when there is nothing left inside of her she screams again, and she doesn’t stop screaming until Orana has fled in terror, until Anders is back and wrapping his arms around her and rocking her back and forth in his grasp.  _I’m here, I’m here. I won’t leave you. I’ll never leave you._  

* * *

 

 __ **And as the black clouds came upon them,  
They looked on what pride had wrought,   
And despaired.  
The work of man and woman,   
By hubris of their making.   
The sorrow a blight unbearable.  
                                                    **\- Threnodies, 7:10-11.

True to his word, he doesn’t leave. He stands beside her as she finally moves toward her bed, and his voice is so gentle, so  _careful,_ that it leaves her aching. “I know nothing I say will change it.” He pauses, and he moves to sit beside her. “i just – I’m sorry.”

     Her hands tremble, and she presses them to the tops of her thighs, trying to steady the shaking. It doesn’t work.

     “You were lucky to have her as long as you did. When the pain fades, that’s what will matter.” She remembers that he lost his family, that he knows what she feels better than she wants anyone to know. 

     It’s what makes her try to speak again, and when she finally manages it, her voice is a whisper. “I didn’t try hard enough to save her.”

     “She wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

     A sharp laugh, humorless and empty, follows, and she looks up at him now. “You,” she says, and her tone is grave now, “didn’t know my mother.”

     He falls silent for a long moment, considering. He’d taken her home after a few too many drinks at the Hanged Man, let her sleep on an empty cot on the nights when the fights with her mother passed their boiling point. He’d seen her grief for Carver, for Bethany, and the weight she’d carried for both. He lifts one hand to card his fingers through her hair, and she leans into him, eyes falling closed. 

     “No,” he agrees. “And I’m sorry I never will. I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

     She falls asleep sooner than she’d have guessed she could, her head on his chest and his arm tight around her, and she sinks into a blessedly dreamless sleep while he watches over her, the rise and fall of his breathing and the thrum of his heartbeat the sweetest lullaby. 

     When she wakes, the others are there, waiting for her to descend. Isabela has her in her arms almost immediately, and she very nearly collapses again; next is Sebastian, and he takes her hands in his and he murmurs a prayer. ( She wishes now that she believed in something,  _anything,_ so she didn’t have to think of her mother simply ceasing to exist. That hurts almost more than anything else she’s felt. ) Fenris doesn’t touch her except to curl his hand against her elbow, and he only bows his head and murmurs an  _I’m sorry._ Varric is last, and he takes both of her hands in his, running his thumbs across her knuckles. 

     “If you need us – ”

     “I know,” she says, and she offers a smile – sad, small, and raw, but  _real._

"Daisy wasn’t sure she should come. Things were tense with you two – ”

     “Not yet.”  _Not another blood mage in my house. No. Never again._

     “I’ve spoken to the Knight Captain and explained the situation.” Sebastian’s voice is a welcome distraction from that thought, and she turns to him, hope dawning on his face. “He’s making arrangements for Bethany to come and see you, and be here for the funeral.”

     “Thank you. I – I have to plan a funeral. Aveline?”

     “Informing the Viscount, and speaking to Meredith.” Isabela looks at her with sympathy, but not as though she’s broken, and she’s grateful for that much. Varric nods, and squeezes her hands lightly.

     “We’ll deal with the funeral arrangements, if you need the help. Aveline will have the urn for you soon; she’s dealing with this one personally.” He pauses, then – “Have you eaten?”

     Grief is an insatiable hunger, a need that leaves her raw, but it is soothed, at least, by their company. Anders keeps an arm around her waist and Isabela laces her fingers into Hawke’s and when Sebastian bows his head to pray for Leandra’s soul, Fenris bows his head as well, almost imperceptibly. Varric looks at her and smiles, though his is as hollow as her own.

     “We’re here, Hawke.”

     Grief would leave her isolated, and at least in this, she has won.

* * *

 

__**Blessed are they who stand before  
The corrupt and the wicked and do not falter.   
Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.   
Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.   
In their blood the Maker's will is written.  
                                                    **\- Benedictions, 4:10-11.

She won’t see Aveline. Even Merrill is allowed to visit, and she sings a song so haunting and beautiful that it opens up a chasm inside of Hawke and makes her feel as though she might collapse into it and vanish for good. But Aveline is turned away; Aveline is told nothing. The only message that Hawke will receive from her is the information that Leandra’s urn is ready to be taken, her ashes ready to be scattered.

     Anders and Fenris and Varric accompany her to the Keep; they were there when Leandra took her last breaths, and it seems only fair that they are there with her to see this through to the end. 

     “Hawke.”

     The voice is familiar but unwelcome. At her side, Anders curls his hand against the inside of her elbow, as if to keep her from doing something she’ll regret, but she is a woman of many regrets, and one more hardly seems insurmountable.

     “I’m here for my mother’s ashes, Aveline.” Her voice is sharp, angry. “That’s all. If you need something done, get one of the guards.”

     Aveline waves a hand dismissively. “I don’t care what else is going on. We haven’t spoken about Leandra. How are you?”

     It is by far the worst question she could ask –  _how are you,_  as if she’d suffered a minor fall, a small injury. As if she hadn’t held a body that hadn’t been her mother’s, hadn’t carried the stench of death and rot in her hair clothes skin for days afterward. Anders’ hand slides lower, fingers encircling her wrist, but it’s not enough to silence the sharp bark of laughter that rips itself from her throat.

     She steps out of his grasp, steps closer to Aveline, shoulders tense, every inch of her on edge. “Keep your sympathy for the next person you let die.”

     Aveline flinches. “What was that for?”

     Around them, guards turn to watch the argument beginning to unfold. Hawke is not an uncommon sight here; all too often she is at the center of whatever hell has been unleashed, ready with a blade and a joke. Now, she is shaking with anger, voice rising. She doesn’t care who sees them. She doesn’t care that Aveline’s cheeks are flushing with embarrassment at the scene.  _I’ll show you a scene, she thinks_ , and her rage has taken root in her blood, her bones.

     Grief crawls in through her mouth, tightens her throat as it slithers down, sets up a home in her belly and erupts. This time, the eruption is slow, and violent.  

     “Your job is protecting the city.” Her voice is a snarl, loud enough that it’s overcome all other conversation. The whole of the room has fallen silent, now; the more polite bystanders have averted their eyes, become fascinated by their fingernails or whatever they hold in their hands. Most openly gawk. “Emeric had been investigating for years.  _I_  was investigating. We brought you proof, we brought you human  _bones_ , and you did  _nothing_. It was more important to keep up appearances and appease the nobility, wasn’t it? And now that the victim was a woman with money, someone you knew, you  _care_? 

     “What about Mharen? Ninette? Alessa? If they’d had more money, if you’d known them, would you have done a damned thing, or would you have kept yourself safe in your office? You’re captain because the people trust you to do your job. If you were any good, my mother would still be alive.  _All of them_ would be alive.” 

     The silence between them is deafening. Aveline looks rather as though she’s been slapped across the face and Hawke revels in it. “I see,” she says, finally.

     “Well?”

     “Well, what?”

     “So you agree that you should have stopped this?”

     “Would have? Certainly.” If there was ever any friendship between them, it seems to be gone, now. Hawke can’t pretend she’s sorry about it, not now. Not after everything. “Could have? Some people are broken. I don’t have an answer that could satisfy you. The guards never do.”

     “This isn’t about your guards. This is about your failure.”

     “Cast your blame if you want, but this isn’t about me.” Aveline bows her head, takes a step back, and after a pause she turns to gather the urn from her desk and holds it out to Hawke. “I am sorry for your loss.”

     She takes the urn and only Anders’ arm around her, and the whispered warning that they need to go, keeps her from following Aveline in her retreat. Grief is a clenched fist, knuckles bloodied and raw, fingernails digging into her palms and bones breaking.

* * *

 

__**Though all before me is shadow,  
Yet shall the Maker be my guide.  
                                                    **\- Trials, 1:15.  


They scatter her ashes over the harbor – an acknowledgement of her years in Ferelden. The mabari howls at Hawke’s side and Bethany grips her hand so tightly that her knuckles grow white, but Hawke doesn’t move. At her other side, Gamlen stares across the water, and he doesn’t move until Hawke reaches to take his hand as well.

     She begs Gamlen to move in with her, but he insists that the house couldn’t be home to him again. Bethany is taken back to the Circle, accompanied by the Knight Captain, and even Cullen offers his sympathies and a prayer. The house is filled with roses, Leandra’s favorite flower, just like the ones Malcolm grew behind the chantry in Lothering, and the others – even Aveline, urged on by Isabela’s eye roll and mutter of  _this isn’t about you, you idiot_ – accompany her home.

     Grief is there, in the house, under her covers, inside her clothes. Grief is in the walls and the windows, the pages of every book, and it slips under the door to Leandra’s room, left unopened and untouched since her death.  

     Grief crawls in through her mouth, tightens her throat as it slithers down, sets up a home in her belly and stays there.

**Author's Note:**

> a couple of years ago, after my first playthrough, i wrote and posted fic of kat immediately following ‘all that remains.’ my understanding of her has changed, and so i wanted to update that with something new and better. i'm really proud of this one; it's interesting to see how my writing has changed. the scene with aveline is largely the same, and everything else has been updated, but follows the same trajectory.
> 
> two and a half years later and i still cried doing this quest. it's like getting the wind knocked out of you.


End file.
